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Sweden’s government is planning to develop a new national strategy to counter the growing prejudice against Islam in the country, according to Alice Bah Kuhnke, Swedish minister of culture and democracy.

Kuhnke said at a Stockholm protest rally against the spate of attacks on mosques that the government will coordinate with local Muslim communities to find ways to fight Islamophobia by spreading awareness about Islam among people, BBC News reported. The term “Islamophobia” is used to refer to the hatred toward, and fear of, the religion of Islam.

“The big problem is that some people have these sets of values which make them prepared to carry out these horrendous deeds. We won’t change that with more window bars, cameras or guards,” Ria Novosti quoted Kuhnke as saying, adding that the minister would start consultations with local Muslim organizations in February.

On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets in three of Sweden’s largest cities, including Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo, to demand an end to the attacks on mosques. At a protest rally, outside the parliament in Stockholm, demonstrators held leaflets saying, “Don’t touch my mosque,” to show their solidarity with the Muslim community in the country.

“I came here because I am against the mosque attacks. They are not only attacks on mosques but also against Swedish democracy,” one of the protesters told The Local, a Swedish media outlet. “I am a Swedish citizen first and I am also a Swedish Muslim seeking to protect my rights and to show solidarity with others to deal with this Islamophobia.”

A mosque in Sweden’s fourth largest city, Uppsala, was attacked on Thursday in what was reportedly the third arson attack on a Muslim center in the country within a week. The attack followed another incident on Monday, when a fire broke out at a mosque in the southern town of Eslov. An earlier Christmas Day attack on another mosque in Eskilstuna city, 86 miles west of the Swedish capital Stockholm, had wounded five people.

Paper hearts have been pasted on to the doors of a mosque in Uppsala following the suspected arson attack there Thursday and hundreds joined a demonstration there Friday morning in solidarity with Swedish Muslims.

Among those demonstrating in Uppsala was Sweden’s minister for public administration, Ardalan Shekarabi.

Speaking to Swedish Radio in Uppsala, Shekarabi said: “We’re seeing a wave of Islamophobic propaganda. It’s obvious that we have to take a stand against Islamophobia and for the equal value of every person. All people, no matter what their faith, should feel safe in Sweden.”

Thousands of people turned up to a rally in Stockholm in support of Sweden’s Muslim community on Friday afternoon following three arson attacks on mosques, with other demonstrations scheduled to take place in Gothenburg and Malmö.

The crowds in Stockholm waved placards and listened to speeches from leading figures within the city’s Muslim community as they gathered on the cobbled streets outside the Royal Palace in the Swedish capital’s Old Town, known as Gamla Stan.

The largest banner at the demonstration read: “Don’t touch my mosque”.

Anti-racism campaigner Yasin Ahmed, 43, told The Local he was “surprised and thrilled” that so many people had turned out for the event on a cold January 2nd.

“I came here because I am against the mosque attacks. They are not only attacks on mosques but also against Swedish democracy. I am a Swedish citizen first and I am also a Swedish muslim seeking to protect my rights and to show solidarity with others to deal with this Islamophobia”.

Omar Mustafa, President of Sweden’s Islamic Association, speaks to The Local about the recent spate of mosque attacks and the rise of Islamophobia across Sweden.

Sweden has made global headlines this week after unknown suspects torched three mosques in different parts of the country. Coupled with a growing anti-immigrant sentiment flowing from the increasingly popular nationalist Sweden Democrat party, the head of Sweden’s Islamic Association says things are getting worse.

“The climate in Sweden is very serious right now and Islamophobia is getting stronger. And it’s not just on the internet, this is happening in real life,” he tells The Local.

Over a seven-day period, fires broke out in Eslöv, Eskilstuna, and Uppsala, with someone scrawling the words “Go home Muslim shit” on the main door of Uppsala’s mosque on Thursday.

“We don’t know who has carried out this attack and the police can’t find a single suspect. We know the attacks were praised on Islamophobic sites, with many people leaving racist comments directly after the attacks.”

He said that there had been fourteen confirmed attacks on mosques over the past twelve months.

“There have been a lot of scary things happening lately, but it’s important to remember that there’s a lot more happening than the series of attacks this week. Muslim women on the streets of Sweden are getting harrassed almost daily,” he added.

Swedish police launched a manhunt Thursday after the third arson attack against a mosque in a week, amid growing tensions over the rise of a far right anti-immigration movement.

“People saw a man throwing something burning at the building,” police in Uppsala said in a statement, adding that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind “a text on the door expressing contempt for religion.”

A police spokesman told Swedish news agency TT that the burning object was a Molotov cocktail and that no one was in the building at the time. Sweden’s Islamic Association posted a photograph online of the main door of the mosque, which was emblazoned with the slogan “Go home Muslim shit”.

The police were alerted by passers-by, who reportedly witnessed the attack at around 0430 GMT. “The crime has been classed as attempted arson, vandalism and incitement to hatred,” the police said, appealing for witnesses to come forward.

Thursday’s attack in Sweden’s fourth-largest city came just three days after a late-night blaze at a mosque in Esloev in the south, which police suspect was also arson.

On Christmas Day, five people were injured when a petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a mosque in Eskilstuna, east of the capital Stockholm.

Sweden’s leftist Prime Minister Stefan Loefven led condemnation of the latest attack. “The most important thing now is that everyone distances themselves from this,” he told TT. “In Sweden no one should have to be afraid when they practice their religion,” he added, saying the government would increase funding for securing places of worship.

According to the anti-racism magazine Expo, there have been at least a dozen confirmed attacks on mosques in Sweden in the last year and a far larger number are believed to have gone unreported.

“People are afraid, they fear for their safety,” Mohammad Kharraki a spokesman for Sweden’s Islamic Association told AFP. “We’ve seen through history that people use violence as a way of polarising society against minorities.”

Sydsvenskan and Skånska Dagbladet report that two hundred people attended last night’s rally organised by “Tillsammans för Eslöv” (Together for Eslöv) in solidarity with the local mosque, which suffered an arson attack on Monday.

The demonstration called for security, freedom of religion and a Eslöv without violence. Speakers included Rebecka Barjosef of Tillsammans för Eslöv, Adnan El-Tahan of the Eslöv Islamic Cultural Association and the vicar of Eslöv, Cerny Erikson.

Police suspect a mosque in southern Sweden was deliberately torched on Monday, with a local imam blaming rising Islamophobia in the region.

Emergency services were called to the mosque in Eslöv, a small city in the south of the country, at around 3.15am on Monday. It is understood that the blaze began after flammable liquid caught fire in one of the rooms in the building.

Firefighters quickly arrived at the scene and were able to prevent the fire spreading, although the flames still caused minor damage to the building.

Samir Muric, the local imam, said he was worried for his own safety. “Unfortunately, this is probably something to do with Islamophobia. I live close by and it’s beginning to feel unsafe,” he told the TT news agency.

The local fire brigade said that with residential homes on top of the mosque, it was lucky that they were able to quell the blaze before more damage was done.

“Think of all the people who lived above,” added Muric. “Think how shocked they must be. I notice that people are scared. I’ve already noticed that fewer people are coming to the mosque with all the vandalism. I can only imagine how an arson attack will affect this.”

Several hundred marchers turned out in a Swedish town on Friday to denounce an arson attack on a mosque that injured five people on Christmas Day as the traditionally tolerant country confronts the rising influence of the extreme right.

A firebomb was thrown through a closed window of the mosque in the central city of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five of the nearly 70 worshippers inside, two of whom remained in hospital on Friday.

Answering calls by the “Together for Eskilstuna” Facebook page to denounce the attack, a large group of people converged on the damaged mosque to show their support. “Several hundred people were there to deliver a message of friendship,” a police spokesman, Roland Lindqvist, told AFP.

According to police, windows in a second Eskilstuna mosque were broken overnight on Thursday, though authorities couldn’t say whether the two attacks were linked.

Sweden’s leftist prime minister, Stefan Löfven, denounced the “hateful violence”. “We will never tolerate this kind of crime. Those who want to practise their religion should have the right to do so,” Lofven told SR radio.

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in central Sweden on Thursday injuring five people, police said, as the country grapples with a political crisis caused by the rise of the extreme right.

“Somebody threw an object through a closed window and afterwards a fire started inside,” police spokesman Lars Franzell told AFP. “There were between 15 and 20 people in the premises.”

Refugee-friendly Sweden woke up to the reality of a new political landscape in early December when the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats brought down the government by refusing to back its budget proposal in parliament.

The mosque is located on the ground floor of a building in the city of Eskilstuna, some 90 kilometres (55 miles) west of Stockholm. According to police, the fire started in the early afternoon. Police said they were investigating the incident as a case of aggravated arson but had no suspects yet.

The five injured were taken to hospital to be treated for injuries including smoke inhalation, lacerations and fractures.

A former Swedish MP has slammed Sweden’s new Housing Minister Mehmet Kaplan, saying that the Muslim politician has a hidden agenda.

Social Democrat politician Nalin Pekgul went on the attack against Mehmet Kaplan from the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) in a debate article in one of Sweden’s leading broadsheets.

Her piece in the Dagens Industri newspaper was prompted by a statement Kaplan made to the Turkish media, in which he claimed that the reason young Muslims are joining the terror group Isis is because of widespread Islamophobia in Europe.

Kaplan, who is Sweden’s new Housing Minister, argued that the government should give more money to Europe’s mosques in an effort to tackle the recruitment. But Pekgul suggested that young people were signing up because they felt lost or rootless and that Islamist extremists were taking advantage of their vulnerability.

“It’s unforgivably naive to think that giving money to these kinds of [Muslim] organizations and mosques will work against segregation and will reach out to these youths who are being radicalized,” she wrote. “It’s exactly this kind of naivety that people like Mehmet Kaplan are counting on, and it’s time for everyone who wants to oppose the radicalization to realize the damage Mehmet Kaplan and others like him can accomplish.”

Kaplan, a 43-year-old born in Turkey, is a former spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Sweden. He has been a member of the Green Party since 2003.

“For fear of being labelled as an Islamophobe, no one dares question Mehmet Kaplan and his hidden agenda,” added Pekgul.